Who knew a Panera Café could give me spiritual food for creating a blog, understanding of my current experience, and another awakening to a new level of self realization about boundaries?
Before Christmas (actually beginning when I was a child, but that’s a blog for another time), it made itself known, and grew more palpable in the first three days of the new year. I’ve been knowing and anticipating 2017 to be extraordinary. I called it into being. And — responding daily — it has not disappointed.
I sit as a participant in it, experiencing it. And I sit on the outside of it, witnessing it in full consciousness.
Today, as I sat quiet and peaceful, intently focusing on my work and intentionally making only a small, respectful footprint in this café at a tiny 2 foot table by the window, I was in it, in my zone, unaware of the people and noises at the other tables around me.
BAM! A young man suddenly and quite emphatically plopped himself, his backpack, and his wadded up Carl’s Jr. bag down at the table next to me. Angry, unconcerned, and oblivious, he made his arrival known in no uncertain terms, his energy spilling— or rather escaping — from his body like those illustrated action lines you see in old fashioned animated cartoons. For the next 8 minutes, he proceeded to talk out loud to himself, throw his phone on the table, and swear at it— and everyone he was upset at — with sarcastic aggressiveness. It seemed he was intentionally pushing the limit, to see how much energy he needed to exert to make himself unwanted and annoying, before I — or someone — would finally tolerate no more and say something to him.
I felt myself becoming agitated, but tried to remain focused. I could not. Not only was he disturbing my peace, but I was in slight disbelief that someone could actually be so over the top. Was this real?
Oddly enough, it seemed that no one else was aware of his presence. It was almost as if he were invisible to everyone, except me. Was this one of those experiences, one that was meant just for me?
Immediately, my ego conscious mind sidestepped the default You’ve got to be kidding mode, and my higher mind began recognizing that there were a handful of possible reasons that this opportunity was presenting itself so obtrusively into my awareness, my physical space.
The first recognition was a challenge, in the form of a question: “What am I willing to take?” Aka, “How valuable is my space, my right to receive as much respect as I offer others?” and “Where are the boundaries separating my sacred experience of the way I want to live, with another’s?”
Along those lines, my next thought was: “This is an opportunity to deepen and strengthen my energetic abilities to ‘isolate’ myself/my concentration from the intrusion of outside elements, to ‘tune out’ interferences, so they would not have the ability to offset my zone.”
With that, I immediately remembered my reoccurring life lesson and thought: “This is a continuance of my experiential healing process of learning to use my ‘voice,’ to express my truth, without fear or doubt, rather than quietly succumb.”
And then: “Knowing how to balance my need to use of my ‘voice’ with sensitivity, intuition of others’ experiences, knowing that everyone is going through their own experiential awakening process and I can just realize and be ok with that, and allow them to have their experience, without having to use my voice, or declare invisible boundaries.”
Then came the answer that is the answer to every discomfort: “Stop resisting. Continue being willing to let go — physically move, change, relocate, be mobile — without having such strong, inflexible attachments to my plan, my efforts, or my desire to stay where and how I’ve comfortably set myself up to be.”
Whether it was the act of writing — or the resulting ease with which I went into my zone as I created, wrote, and rose in my awareness that this was an opportunity disguised as a boundary invasion — as suddenly as the ‘invasion’ began, it just as suddenly disappeared. He was gone. No person ever talked to him. No food was ever delivered to him.No one ever seemed to notice him. I didn’t see him leave. He just vanished.
During the process of taking time out to consider the possibilities, and write about it. My peace was reinstated. I let go.
Let go of attachment to the plan, the outcome, the perfect scenario. Let go of the resistance to sacrificing my valuable focus. Letting go provided space for the awareness, the truth. Knowing that everything is always happening for me. Knowing that I am always being looked out for. Knowing that I am always being guided toward what I want. I am continually awakening. And in the awakening, I have learned to stop the clenching, the attachment energy, as soon as I notice it.
Although what happens to me may seem to happen at an inopportune moment, or be an inconvenient interruption — and though it feels like it is happening to me — it is really happening for me, and from me. From my desire to evolve and create a life experience that allows me to avoid the conditioned and default beliefs, habits, and pitfalls that take me into suffering…and from my desire to transcend suffering, so that I can experience more joy and peace.
More and more these past few years, I am willing to let go, to check in, to receive the message, to follow the path, and to receive the nugget.
In this brief experience — and the writing of it — I am more awake, more fully living in my knowing that I create my own opportunities, my own learning, my own knowledge, my own wisdom, my own joy, and my own peace. I am continually creating myself. I am continually transcending my previous experience. I am never done. I get to renew myself as many times, in as many ways as I want.
That is freedom. That is liberation.
Yes, this experience was just meant for me, created from me.
Thank you Experience.
Thank you me.
Update: An hour later, a customer sitting on the other side of the cafe was calling the waiter over to see a table that had evidently been attacked by a homeless man. Trash and spilled coffee covered the table, and— a wadded up Carl’s Jr. Bag.
Originally published at medium.com